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[BattleBots] - A New Dawn in the East: King of Bots

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Those kinds of wheels have been around for a bit (not in battlebots though) and from what I remember reading the downside is why bots like minotaur don't use them. You don't get enough traction to push another bot around

And, considering the gyroscopic forces that come into play with a spinner, losing any traction is a bad thing. Even when they're not pushing stuff around, they need as much grip as possible just so they're not shaking themselves across the box.

Just finished watching the latest episode.
Am I a bad person for really looking forward to seeing Mammoth go up against a nasty spinner? Cause I bet it'll explode real pretty.

I know bot durability is important and not failing because your bot hits hard and shakes itself loose is important but seeing a fight where one robot is clearly dominating only to render itself immobile blows.

At least whatever ill conceived design that makes it through with luck will just get annihilated but the top bots.

Edit:

Ok at first it looked like Copperhead just failed but during the slomo replay you actually see Skopios break the wheel chain with it's weapon. Skopios needs to work on mobility though, looks really hard to drive like the center of mass is too high and back for the wheel position.

Monsoon vs Ragnarok

Well that was short. Monsoon hits very hard

Falcon vs BreakerBox

It almost looked like there was some radio interference for that fight. Falcon looks like and industrial shredder.

After their first fight, I said that Cobalt combines everything terrifying about Bronco and Tombstone. But after seeing what they did to Duck, they're worse. Tombstone didn't do a whole lot of much to that wedge, and it's alter ego Last Rights lost to it. Cobalt almost folded it in half before ripping it off and throwing it into the dead man corner.

Floor scraping wedges need to be hinged or something because it's kinda sad to see a weapon like that saw a spinner breaker in half, throw the pieces twelve feet in the air, and then shit the bed and eat a knockout because they shoved a little piece of steel through the floor joints.

I'm curious how they get so much power into that. The spinner itself can't way anything close to the drum spinners like on Minotaur. It even looks smaller than the another prolific flipper in End Game. I'm guessing they must just have some fancy motor that's running a much higher RPM to be able to flip 250lb bots like they are nothing. The teeth also seem to have a knack for grabbing that some of the other vertical spinners don't. Very rarely does Minotaur flip a bot like that. Mostly they just chew up armor, but rarely find enough purchase to get a big flip in. Then again that front wedge on Cobolt seems designed specifically to feed edges up into the spinner too. Interesting design to say the lease, but I wonder how it will stand up to a big horizontal spinner like Tombstone.

Edit also to be fair to Duck, Duck is designed almost specifically as the anti-Tombstone bot, meant mostly to fight against horizontal spinners.

I can't find much on their design except that the weapon isn't driven like most weapons, its all about energy storage. When it hits, it doesn't expend all it's power instantly, it has follow through. So there's all the impact of a spinner but the follow through is what threw Duck around like Bronco.

It's limited more by angular momentum (the builders actually anticipated the problem that made that giant spinner break the test box because they actually know physics) and the safety rules than the mechanical limits of the system.

A lot of robots can go past the limits. Not just spinners, either, ever wonder why Bronco claims it can flip a truck but isn't putting robots through the ceiling, or why those clips show it throwing stuff heavier than a robot higher than it does in fights? It only runs at maximum PSI to show off, not to fight.

I edited that because, yeah, Ive expressed skepticism on that but they say it every time.

They have shown it throwing 500lb objects a bit higher than their battle box record against 250lb robots, though. Some of that has to be setup and having everything stationary, but some of its because they aren't under BattleBots pneumatic safety limits at home.

Still, Jasper is cold shit. That hammer is slow as hell. 12 mph is a fraction of Blacksmith's swing speed, and their hammer is a lot smaller. It's telling that their strategy wasn't, "Hit them with the hammer and break them," but, "Try and get the hammer stuck in somewhere important."

I think this may be the first time I've seen a hammer be effective in Battlebots.
I mean, there's been a lot of hammers that could theoretically do a lot of damage, but they tend to lack the accuracy to do so.

What the hell, Bronco? You're covered in defensive wedges and shrouds on your back and sides, and the first thing you do in the fight is feed your flipper's business end straight into Bite Force's ramped up spinner? This fight was over in less than ten seconds.

It doesn't make any sense because last season there were plenty of examples of Bronco leading into spinners with it's ass wedge. They've even driven under other bots backwards and hit them with the flipper from underneath.

I think I read Sidewinder is like Free Shipping last year, a successful wedgebot from other competitions with an active weapon bolted on for Battlebots purposes.

Remember how that worked out for Free Shipping? Upside down swinging their broken forklift on its cables like a flail with their flamethrower nozle bent back into their chassis melting all their wires.

SERIOUSLY WHAT THE EVER LOVING FUCK ARE YOU THINKING WITH THE TWANGERS? They're supposed to keep spinners out of range, but A. they're shorter than even Witch Doctor's reach and B. every spinner in the field just breaks them off or bends them out of the way and eats the fucking tires. They did less than nothing last season, at the RE:Mars thing Witch Doctor systematically removed ALL of them to make a point, but they DOUBLED THE FUCK DOWN ON THEM. The rear wedge is replaced with triangular rails or something to free up weight to have four more twangers and do they even have the fenders anymore? Jesus Actual Fucking Christ you are old school veterans at this you know how this works this kind of stuff is how you lose in a split decision to Buddy Lee Don't Play In The Street.

Hypershock, though.

Holy damn they got over whatever happened last season. Completely disassembled Monsoon in a way that neither driver expected to even be possible. So far away from getting gutted by Bite Force in one hit last year.

And Valkyrie...

I think Valkyrie has some serious problems going on. They had movement trouble against Hypershock (when they weren't in the screws or the hammers or the air so, you know, forgiveness if you didn't notice) and I don't think they even actually moved in a useful/controlled manner during the Ragnarok fight, they won because Ragnarok has a fatal design flaw and while Valkyrie's ref was saying, "You gotta show me movement," while they were wiggling in the corner, Ragnarok's ref was just counting down because their robot was inside out and clearly not going anywhere until the safety crew came in to sweep it up.

And the Ewart family with Hydra

I have said some shit about those guys, and I'll admit it hasn't all been fair. Whyachi and Son of Whyachi were demons in the old days, but SoW is literally the same robot it was twenty years ago and nobody else in the field can say the same - even Warhead has evolved (even if they never thought to replace that drum or make a backup in actual decades). It's still a mean spinner, but it's not a dominating force anymore, and it has had some seriously embarrassing losses, and it's got glaring weaknesses that everyone knows about. Lockjaw built a new part just to fight them. Warrior Dragon is almost as old and just as unchanging, and I don't think it has ever in all that time actually kept its weapon working past the first minute of a fight, it's just been a perennial turd. And going through their wiki article on all the stuff they've run in other events or the years Battlebots wasn't on TV, it's a litany of sadness and mediocrity. Even this year, Falcon failed to impress against Breaker Box.

But, ok, credit where credit is due, Hydra is the new doom flipper to make up for Bronco losing their minds. Hydra just joined an elite club of robots that actually cut another robot in half. The clubhouse had a huge, "NO FLIPPERS ALLOWED" sign on the door, and they cut it in half. With their flipper.

I'm interested to see who'll be in he Desperado this year. After what Lockjaw did to it last year, I expect more big names staring at a 2-2 flop to see the value of it than past year when it was mostly potatoes.

Edit: Guy said, "Oh it's ok it's the belts we know the smoke of the belts it's nothing," but you could see him hesitate and confer with his te each time it started. I believe him it's the belts (it only happened when the drum was hitting shit and stopped a few seconds after they disengaged) but not that it's nothing, because he sure acted concerned.

At least that means if something was going to burn up and fail it was just the weapon and not the whole bot. I love Minotaur and Marco and Daniel Freitas and if they lost to Lucky I was going to actually cry a little.

A slipping weapon belt is fixable, nothing like the problems they've had so far. I'm sure they'll be fit to take on Endgame later, and I'm not sure anyone in the desperado field can beat them if they do. And with the earlier problems fixed and this one probably fixed they're on point to be a serious contender.

Traded half their weapon motors for stabilizing bars and now they can juuuuuuust barely move with the weapon spun up. Very poor maneuvering, but incredible power. Cut Axe Backwards in half and then caught fire on one side. Then caught fire on the other side after the safety crew extinguished it.

Damn, didn't expect that. Black Dragon lost their weapon but dramatically maintained control of the fight and won on aggression and control. Sucks for Minotaur but that's the drawback to entering the Desperado.

Desperado fights do count with the selection committee in some capacity, so Minotaur still probably turned their season around, with two brutal wins and a slugfest decision loss to offset the double knockout. If they get two more wins and can show the consistent power they did here they've still got a good shot.